Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/126

 from the British Museum collections. The book is divided into twenty-four chapters; the title of some of them will indicate the wide scope of the book. There is a chapter on Bohemian Glass, Drama, Fiction, John Hus, History, Music, Periodicals, Politics, etc.

ThebookThe book [sic] is indispensable to every serious student of Bohemia; it will be very useful to all who want to acquaint their American friends with what has been written in English about Bohemia. The price of the book is $1.50.

Under this title the Chicago Daily News published on June 26 an inspired editorial which we are proud to reproduce herewith.

Prof. Masaryk of Bohemia and his daughter, Miss Olga Masaryk, have been in Washington, where they have talked about Bohemia and about Germany. We greet, we salute, the character they show, the purpose they show, for the fighting and for the finishing of this war.

According to the German code of national ethics, they have every human right, this father and this daughter, to desire the destruction of Germany and the extinction of the German name: to urge the allies to gut Germany, to partition it, to break it limb from limb, to rend it into powerless fragments. For four centuries Bohemia has lain buried by Germans. For a hundred years it has struggled to burst its grave cloth, only to be wrapped back into it by Germans. Prof. Masaryk is an exile, condemned to death by Germans. His wife, his other daughter, his two sons, are at home in the power of Germans. His friends, his acquaintances, his fellow countrymen in thousands have been executed by Germans. He speaks of these wrongs; and his daughter, who is with him, speaks of them; and they cannot forget them. And yet not once have they talked of reprisals and retaliations, of partitions and persecutions. Not once have they descended to the level of their enemies. Not once have they been German.

We welcome these visitors .these ambassadors from a nation so ancient, so new. They confirm to us the spirit which we had already surmised in the soul of the whole Bohemian people. Never again, they say, and we believe, shall Bohemia return underground. Bohemia will have victory now, in the light of day, or, in the light of day, extermination. They are ruthless for their rights. But not one inch of German soil do they demand. Not one German right, even in Bohemia, do they ask us to extinguish.

Germans, in a minority, have existed in Bohemia for ages. They will have a right to continue to exist there. The Masaryks do not speak of their extermination or of their expulsion, or even of their exclusion from any political right or from any civil right whatsoever, of office or of property or of language. On the contrary, they speak of guaranties by which those rights shall be safeguarded forever.

This is the spirit which will both defeat Germany and redeem the world. It is the spirit of America’s own entrance into the war. We greet the Czechoslovak National Council, sitting at London, recognized by the Allies as the Bohemian provisional government. We greet the Czechoslovak national army, fighting on the Western front, recognized by the Allies as the army of Bohemia returned to life. We greet a new military ally. We greet a new spiritual ally.

When we look at Siberia and see the long lines of Czechoslovak armies|, ex-prisoners of war, fighting their way to Vladivostok, to San Francisco, to New York, to the Western front, to hurl themselves against the Germans, we know the valor of Bohemia. When we listen to the Czechoslovak political leaders, in their proclamations at Prague and in their conversations at Washington, we know the morality, the democratic morality, the Christian morality, the invincible morality of Bohemia.

And so to Bohemia, a nation which refuses masters, a nation which refuses slaves, a nation worthily a member of the coming democratic family of nations, we give not only our hands, but our hearts.

Five Czech coal miners in Most, Bohemia, were each sentenced to 18 months at hard labor for refusing to go down the shaft on May 22nd.

Unusually late frosts damaged most seriously this year’s crops in Bohemia. The Prague papers state that frosts came as late as the first days of June. In Germany which lies north of Bohemia the damage was even more severe.

Among the resolutins adopted by the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor at St. Paul was one declaring unconditionally for Czechoslovak independence. The resolution was introduced at the request of Typographical Union No. 330, composed of Bohemian typesetters.

German newspapers published a fairly accurate report of the triumphant reception of Professor Masaryk in Chicago. According to them he was welcomed by 250,000 of his countrymen. This report was copied by the Bohemian papers, and while no comment was possible owing to the censorship, one can easily imagine the feelings of elation and the eager gossip with which the report of Masaryk’s royal welcome must have been received in the streets and coffeehouses of Prague.

There is no such thing, there has never been any such thing as Austrian culture. What there was, and still remains of culture properly so-called in Austria, is not Austrian, but Latin or Slavonic, and therefore friendly, and certain to make common cause with us as soon as it has been freed from the grip of the dynastic constabulary of the Hapsburgs. —M. A. Gerothwohl in the Fortnightly Review.